For the Love of Texture

I'm so sorry I've been quiet.  Sometimes life gets in the way.  But I'm trying to rework things so it should be better in the future.

You may recognize some of these ATCs from previous posts.  This is a photo I took after I was having more playtime with my supplies.

I had ATCs leftover from a piece of 12 x 12 scrapbook paper where I didn't like the pattern side of it.  I also have old tags in my stash.  Unfortunately, some of my paint supplies dried out.  No they weren't open.  I had Dina Wakley tubes and some Dylusions tubs, so bright and colorful.  Very disappointing.  I can imagine a lot of reasons.  Air could have possibly gotten in at some point.  Life events, moving, or somple mistakes that you're not expecting can cause it.  I remember using them, but I went through a big dry spell due to life, so it's possible that dry spell affected my supplies.  On the plus side, my mediums seem to be okay for now.  And while I love a good psychic, or medium, that's not the type of medium I'm talking about.

Now I have not gone to art school, nor have I taken any strict art classes.  I've taken in person and online classes from several artists (Dina Wakley, Dyan Reaveley, Joanne Sharpe, and Dawn DeVries Sokol come to mind).  In taking the classes, reading blogs, magazines, all of that, I've learned techniques and terms.  Mediums in art are things like gesso, texture paste, and gel medium.

I like using paint with stencils, but .  Also, different paints have different thicknesses.  Some are heavy body so they hold form very well, others are free flow, so they are good for gelli printing.  But for this experiment I wanted more depth without compromising the color.  Most colors I don't mind them being lighter.  However, I'm not the biggest fan of pink.  I can handle it in certain cases, but I was using red, and didn't want pink.  So I know I couldn't use gesso.  Enter texture paste.  I grabbed some red paint, mixed it with texture paste, and used it with a stencil to add the mixtures to some ATCs and tags.  The picture is the result.

I also had some green/blue watered down paint that I didn't want to let go to waste, so I had some play with both stencils and freehand brush strokes.

When you play, do you have a plan or do you just see where things go?  What was the result?  I'd love to hear more!  Come back soon!